“Unorthodox Classical Electric Pieces,” the new album by Nicola Di Tommaso is released on Friday, Feb. 16 for the Jazz Collection series.
Classical music played in an unorthodox way, so the title describes the interesting album by Nicola Di Tommaso, a jazz guitarist but with a great love for Bach, Ravel, Scarlatti.
Di Tommaso, therefore, did not want to make a classical guitar record, but an album of classical music played on electric, using the philosophy of his instrument: reverbs, delays, solid body, semi-hollow, hollow body guitars, recorded with different combinations of amplifiers.
“I wanted to record this record because of the love I have for classical music,” confirms Nicola di Tommaso, “And because of the discipline I find in it. Understood as a personal path apt to enrich myself and the music I make.”
The first curiosity concerns, of course, the choice of composers selected by Di Tommaso for this change of approach, for this “contemporization” of classical works, which, the guitarist explained, “is a consequence of what has accompanied me at different times in my musical life.”
The only piece that does not belong to classical music is Amedeo Tommasi’s “Ballad for Michelin,” a “tribute born out of the importance of the meeting I had with the maestro.” Amedeo Tommasi, a pillar teacher at Saint Louis College of Music, was one of the most important jazz pianists of his generation and a very famous composer of film music.
Here is the tracklist of “Unorthodox Classical Electric Pieces.”
Johann Sebastian Bach – Prelude, Lute Suite BWV 997
Amedeo Tommasi – Ballad For Michelin
Fernando Sor – Studio Op. 31 No. 20
Maurice Ravel – Prelude to Mademoiselle Jean Leleu
Domenico Scarlatti – Sonata K1
Federico Mompou – Cancion y Danza No. 6
Leo Brower – An Idea (Passacaglia for Eli)
Jazz Collection is the record series produced by Saint Louis dedicated to Jazz in all its nuances: from bop to avant-garde, from mainstream to gypsy jazz, from big band to samba jazz. The label’s strength is the high and select artistic quality of jazz productions.
